Birdsboro family excited to see Obama inauguration (with video)

BIRDSBORO — The Hall family figured they had better make it to a presidential inaugural before their son himself gets inaugurated as president himself.

Amy and Brian Hall will be bringing their 11-year-old son Carter to President Obama’s second inaugural Monday, in part because “he’s wanted to be president since he was 5 years old,” his mother said with a laugh.

By the time you read this, he may already have partially realized his wish.

Friday, when Amy Hall spoke with a reporter, she reported that her son won the post of vice-president of the Fifth Grade at Birdsboro Elementary School.

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“His teachers have been keeping track of them since he was 5 and since he told them he wanted to be president one of them actually calls him ‘President Carter,’” she said with a laugh.

Not all the Halls will be able to go. Carter’s 6-year-old brother Logan has to stay behind, largely because his mom is worried about losing him in the crowd.

It won’t be easy for the Halls to be a part of history Monday.

The bus will drop them off three miles from the National Mall.

“I told Carter about it and he said ‘three miles huh? It’s OK mom, I can do it,’” she said. “He is really, really excited.”

A teacher by trade, Hall said she could not find work in her field and so is now working as a janitor at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, and at the church pre-school.

Her husband works at Morgan Corp. in Morgantown and she said the family supported Obama’s re-election and believe “we’re lucky to have jobs and we think a lot of it has to do with what President Obama did when the economy collapsed.”

“Carter has a sense of that,” Hall added. “He has been going into the voting booth with us since he was in a stroller and although we’re not politically gun-ho, we do like to keep informed about what’s going on. He’s so excited and we figured we had better take him before he has his own in 2040.”

The Halls will be joined on a Klein Bus chartered specifically for those who want to attend the inaugural by family friend Michael Parker.

An adjunct history professor who teaches at several locations, including the Pottstown campus of Montgomery County Community College, Parker specializes in American history and sports a sizeable collection of campaign memorabilia — at least according to his wife Holly, who works in the college’s financial aid office and who will stay home Monday with their two children.

Parker said he has never been to an inauguration before and he’s going because he wants to see history as its made for a change, instead of looking back on it.

“An inauguration is one of the few times that you know will be historically significant before it happens,” said Parker. “I think the fact that Obama was re-elected is significant, given that it was not always clear how this election was going to turn out.”

Although he teaches all kinds of history, Parker said American history is his speciality and the presidents for whom he has an affinity are Lincoln and Jefferson.

However, he said it is too soon to say how Obama would measure up to those two presidents, or any of his predecessors for that matter.

“He’s done a lot, but it’s too soon to say whether the health care reform will work, or what he’ll get done on gun control,” Parker said. “Any historian will tell you it usually takes 20 to 30 years to fully understand the significance of a presidency.”

But the folks at Klein Bus Co. at least understand the significance of inaugurations.

This is the third time they have scheduled a bus for the express purpose of bringing locals to the inauguration, said Ashley Hoke, sales and marketing manager for the Douglassville company.

“We did it for the first inauguration of President George W. Bush, and for President Obama’s first,” she said.

And although there were more buses needed four years ago, she said there was enough interest expressed this year to schedule the one they will send, which leaves at 5:30 a.m.

“We still have one or two seats left,” she said Friday.

“Four years ago it was the inauguration of the first black president so we all knew it would be history in the making, but it’s still exciting that he got re-elected,” Hoke said.

Luckily for Meredith Pahowka, a 2010 graduate of Pottsgrove High School, she doesn’t have to worry about catching a 5:30 a.m. bus: she’s already in Washington, D.C.

A junior at George Washington University where she is majoring in Middle East Studies — a course of study she described as “hard, but I like it” — Pahowka said Monday will be her first presidential inauguration.

“When you’re living in D.C., you kind of have to,” she said, half joking

She and her friends are anticipating a crowd and packed subways, but nothing that isn’t worth braving.

“This was the first time I could vote and no matter who you voted for, this is definitely something I’ve always wanted to experience,” she said.